LIKENING OURSELVES UNTO ERRONEOUS DOCTRINE

I’m writing this note to get your opinion. Not that I value it, but that by you writing it will make you complicit with me. It’s always nice to have an accomplice as there’s always enough blame to go around.

In the Book of Mormon we always read about the Lamanite stripling warriors, and we sing in the song, “We have been taught in our youth.” So we can be as the army of Helaman, yada, yada. Anyway, my point is that they were taught by their mothers many things that would keep them safe and to not fear or doubt.

So, as you know, I served two 5 year hitches in the Nursery and it was always good to see our little three year olds become toilet trained and leave to go into the Junior Primary. It’s like a little fledgling falling out of the nest and learning to fly or die when they hit the ground. I know that some of them were probably disillusioned when they got to the Primary because we raised them on treats and they were probably thinking that the ice cream socials would continue in the new class. We even had one or two want to come back to visit every week.

As not to be distracted, they are put in with a group of other kids all the way up to 11 years old and are taught in their youth many songs with messages about Christ or doctrine. If you haven’t read it yet, you need to read my post that deals with the hand movement doctrines of the Primary.

This isn’t like the HJ of Germany where the kids were indoctrinated to serve the country, but in a way, Primary becomes a seed bed of growth for our kids.

So one day we’re singing the song “When I Am Baptized” and my brain goes off on a false doctrine alarm. For the sake of being short, I’ll refer to the part where it says, “…..I know when I am baptized my wrongs are washed away and I can be forgiven and improve myself each day…..” After the song is over I get up and go to the back of the room to where the Primary President is sitting and I say, “Do you know how false that doctrine is? First of all, most of these kids are baptized at the age of eight and we believe that they’re not even accountable until the age of eight years old. Their wrongs are not washed away because they don’t have any. Secondly, their baptism doesn’t wash anything away except dirt. You would think that the correlation committee would notice the doctrinal error and ban the song from being taught.” She thought about it and said that she’d get back to me. She never did.

Now I can say this with a perfect knowledge that if I were the Bishop or Stake President I would ban the song from being sung unless they sung it as I did from that time forward. The reason that I can say that and not have it seem as a death wish is because the Lord knows my heart and my dislike of the many and tiresome meetings, and he wouldn’t allow me to be in charge because I’d turn everything over to the Relief Society. Heck, they have a committee for everything, and what they don’t have can be created. You want a committee to check up on priesthood home teaching? Done! You want a person to be in charge of the priesthood? Done! How about a group of women to keep the announcements in priesthood opening exercises short? That could be done too. I’d just have them print the announcements and it would go something like this, “For all priesthood brethren, it’s either the same as the other quorums or you’re not doing anything at all.” And since they’re really good at spreading a table cloth over the table in the Relief Society room, I’d have them assigned to place the linens on the sacrament table and making it look as though the linens were ironed and cleaned. They’d do it! I'd even have them in charge of cleaning the sacrament trays so that there weren't any germs on them. Do you really know how many times they get cleaned in a year? Probably, not even once! Do you think that they're full of germs? Probably, yes! Next time you want to see how they're taken care of, just go to the preparation room and watch them dump the stuff in the garbage and stack them. They don't even get washed off.

And now you want to know how I would sing the song from that time forward, don’t you? I would sing it loud and proud, “……I know when I am baptized my wrongs aren’t washed away, but I can be forgiven and improve myself each day……”

One time when singing it one of the boys in my class asked me, “Did you just say that you know your wrongs aren’t washed away?” Yep, I said it.

As of this writing, the song hasn’t been banned or changed and it is still being sung all of the time, and those kids who were in my class are now 16 years old and still believe that their wrongs, that they never had when they were eight, were washed away when they were baptized. I just hope that they will come to a good knowledge of the truth in the next two years before they go on a mission and unwittingly spread the false doctrine to investigators. But then again, I would love to be an investigator and have that doctrine taught to me so that I can be washed clean spiritually and physically, when I’m baptized. I’d even request a bar of soap. I wonder if we spread false doctrine and others believe it, does it make it true? Stay tuned for my next post on another Primary song that drives me crazy and in my opinion is a doctrinal anomaly.

Go ahead and comment; I need an accomplice or someone to correct my thinking.